Why TNT killed Crusade (they wanted out of the contract)

electrictroy

I'm not going to review the show but in brief: I consider Crusade equal to the original Star Trek's first thirteen episodes. Because it was an exploration ship and had that unusual otherworldy music, for me watching Crusade evokes the same sense of "wonder" and "mystery" and "danger" as the original Trek did. What happened to Crusade is approximately equivalent to if Babylon 5 ended after "Signs and Portents" where the Shadow Ambassador Mr. Morden first unveiled himself. Crusade was a 5-year-story about Earth and the Shadows, but was unfortunately cut short.

Also the recommended airing order is episode 103 (Racing the Night), 101, 102, 104, 105, and so on. IMHO it makes more sense story-wise to follow this production order, rather than following the TNT/DVD order. (The same is true for Star Trek TOS.)

So anyway quoting J.Michael Straczynski (jms):

It was after episode five. We'd gotten minimal notes from TNT, pretty much along the lines of the Warner Bros notes we had in our first season of Babylon 5, so things were going pretty swimmingly. Then, out of nowhere, they gave us the shutdown so they could look at the show. That wasn't a small sign, it was more like an explosion going off on the set.

.....It was only after I had left that I ran into TNT executives who had been working there at the time, who said, 'We're sorry about what happened.' I asked them under promise of confidentiality, and what it came down to was they had done a multi-year audience survey, and finally got the results in right around the time we were shooting episode 5, and it said that the TNT audience does not like or want or respond to SF.

What I was told is that when they saw those figures come in, they decided that they wanted to get out of the contract and use that money to buy repeats of Law & Order, which their survey indicated would be a good buy for them. It you look at the trades for that time, they were kind of surprised when TNT came in on this bidding war and nailed it. Everyone thought their budget for the year had been allocated, so where was this money coming from? By sheer coincidence, the money they paid is equal to what they were going to pay for a full season of Crusade.

Plus they didn't want to have to pay for the first 13. By trying to say it wasn't the show they ordered, they were trying to get out of paying anything and stick Warners with the bill. That was the purpose of the notes that came through. They could say, 'We gave them notes, and they wouldn't do them.' No, because they were egregious and wrong and I couldn't do them, but at the time, I knew none of this.

And as one TV person told me after the fact, "Had you done every single note that they asked you for, they would have found some other reason to get out of that contract." They were trying to paper their way out of the deal, which makes me even gladder that I stood up when I did. - jms

In my opinion:

TNT sounds like a bunch of shysters: (1)Sign a contract (2) Change your mind (3) And manufacture excuses not to pay for the 13 episodes produced.

score 9/10

electrictroy 17 July 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2097492/